Sunday, May 28, 2023
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
Pentecost Sunday
watch this service online (readings start around 19:32; sermon starts around 26:41)
photo credit: Elle Dowd
I was really glad I had the chance to get away to Chicago for a few days earlier this month. Even though it was a quick trip, I did get to spend time with several friends and just unwind for a bit. One of the most fun parts of it was that I got to go to a murder mystery dinner that some friends of mine were hosting at their house. Has anyone ever been to one of those? It’s basically like role-playing the game Clue; a group of people gathers together in character over dinner, and over the course of the evening, they try to solve a (fictional) murder and figure out which character is the murderer.
I went with my friends Erin and Josh, who I was staying with, and, to be honest, we weren’t completely sure what to expect ahead of time about how this would all go. Each of us had been given a particular character to play. My character’s name was Mrs. Withering, the housekeeper; Erin was the cook, Blanche Batters; and to everyone’s amusement, Josh – one of the few non-clergypeople in attendance – was assigned the character of the Rev. Will Beedone.
The friends who were hosting the party gave explicit instructions in their invitation that everyone was expected to be both in costume and in character for the entire evening. However, we had been given only the barest details about these characters we were supposed to play! For instance, I knew that my character was supposed to wear a high-necked black dress with a silver locket and her hair in a bun; I knew she was an accountant before becoming a housekeeper, that she took care of her father before he died, and that her employer – the murderee – didn’t pay her very well (I mean, everybody’s got to have a motive, right?). But that was it! That was all I knew.
And so, as I’m sure you can imagine, it was a bit awkward for everyone at first. I mean, it wasn’t like we had any kind of script to follow or anything. We just had to kind of roll with these few details we’d been given and then make the rest of it up on the fly. But we dove into it! And it was funny; the more we lived into playing these roles together, the more these characters started to take on a whole life of their own. For instance, my friend Erik was playing the butler, and we decided that it made sense for the butler and the housekeeper to be kind of in cahoots together; we really leaned into the whole upstairs/downstairs dynamic and spent a lot of the evening either chastising other household staff characters or being snarky to the rich guest characters and just generally trash-talking all of them behind their backs.
By the end of the evening, the initial awkwardness of what we were doing had all but disappeared. It came to feel natural and really, really fun to lean into the goofiness of these characters. And as we did so together, we breathed life into this story. We brought the story to life – with nothing more than those few words of detail we’d been given at the start of the evening and our own willingness to dive in and live into these roles. And I even managed to actually solve the murder!
Anyway, when we last left the disciples, last Sunday, Jesus had just ascended into heaven, leaving them standing on a hilltop in confusion. They had been given only the barest details about what was going to happen next. Jesus had made some allusions to the Holy Spirit coming and he told the disciples that they would be his witnesses in all the earth, but it wasn’t like they had a game plan or a script for exactly how they were going to do all that. They had been waiting for the promised Messiah to come and usher in the kingdom – you know, “Are we there yet??” like we said last Sunday. Now that the Messiah has come – and gone! – a whole new era has opened in the history of their people, and the disciples have no idea what comes next.
But they dive into it! They don’t really know what’s expected of them in this moment, so they just do their best to live into their call to follow and witness to Jesus as best as they can. They continue to gather together in love, to worship and pray together, to tell the story. And it’s as they are gathered, doing these things, that the Holy Spirit makes its dramatic entrance, roaring through the assembly with the sound of wind and flame.
And before people even have a chance to recover from this deafening wind, a whole cacophany of holy confusion suddenly erupts among the disciples. From their own lips, the music of a multitude of different languages suddenly bursts forth. They find themselves joyfully lifting praises to God in the many languages of their global neighbors – and foreign visitors to the city are astonished to hear these Jewish believers praising God in their own languages.
There is still no script; there is still no divine roadmap laid out for the disciples with a little dot marked “You are here.” Instead, it is the Spirit and the gifts themselves that point the disciples toward the new paths they are being called to walk. I mean, say you’re a disciple who out of the blue suddenly starts speaking in Arabic, or in Latin – that’s probably going to give you a pretty good idea of where it is God might be calling you to go! Or similarly with us – gifts of being able to play an instrument or to fix a roof or to look through financial reports without your eyes glazing over – all these can clue us in to the paths and vocations to which God might be calling us.
All this glorious chaos at Pentecost is evidence that the Holy Spirit has faithfully showed up – just as God has promised. And amidst all this noise and confusion, Peter speaks up and reminds the people that this is exactly what God had promised the people of Israel generations and generations before. He quotes the words of the prophet Joel, saying:
In those days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon slaves, men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and all shall prophesy.
Acts 2:17-18 / Joel 2:28-29
Peter points the people toward the gospel good news: that God has kept God’s promise.
As for what comes next, it’s now up to the disciples. There’s no set script for them to follow. They’ve been given these gifts, and the inspiration of the Spirit – they’ve been given just enough details to suggest a direction. But it’s up to them to dive in. It’s up to them to really live into these new roles that they’re being called to. And their willingness to trust God – together with the guiding of the Spirit – this is what will breathe this new story into life.
God continues to send us the Holy Spirit, to bless us with our many and varied gifts, as Paul writes in our second reading in his letter to the Corinthians. God continues to send us wisdom and insight to guide us, when we are still enough to receive it. And like the first disciples, confused after Jesus’ ascension – or like the guests at a murder mystery dinner – these few details we’ve been given might not always feel like they’re enough for us to go on. It might be hard for us to trust in the promise that the Spirit will sustain us. I think it’s hard especially in a moment of transition and change like this one – as we all prepare to take our first steps into a future that has the potential to be quite different from the road that we have traveled up until now.
But the future is a mystery – a mystery into which God is joyfully inviting us. Through the Spirit, God invites us to discover the way forward bit by bit, following the clues of our gifts, and continually seeking the inspiration of the Spirit in our prayers. And as we do so, we’ll also discover that we don’t need a script to spell out the whole story for us. All we need is faith that what we’ve been given is enough, and boldness enough to dive in, trusting that this same Spirit – the Spirit that now burns in us – will help us breathe our own new story into life.
This is the Day 